Chicken "Jay-Frazi" - Curry Indian Dish

It all started around 2 PM on a Thursday afternoon just around that time when you stop working at your desk and start drifting over to pinterest and checking your facebook to escape the black white normalcy of the mundane 9-5.

I starting thinking.. maybe I should be an awesome girlfriend and cook a delicious meal for my boyfriend, Jay. I started googling "quick and easy" dinner recipes hoping for an easy way out. Now, I do love to cook but every once in awhile I get burned out. I pretty much rotate most of the recipes you'll find on this blog along with the boring grilled chicken and veggies. So I was looking for something different, something new, something I've never done before... but.. quick and easy. I kept seeing Indian curry recipes popping up and thought hmm.. I've never made that before? I also saw recipes for baked chicken and mashed potatoes and my mouth just started watering for something comforting. I knew without even asking Jay that he would pick the curry over anything I ran by him so I just went with it.

So here is my glorious iPhone photo of the Indian Curry/ Jay-Frazi. As I mentioned I thought this was going to be horrible because it sounded somewhat healthy so I didn't bother photographing my progress.

I started looking at a recipe for Butter Indian Chicken- 2 sticks of butter, 1 quart of heavy cream, onions, and chicken. Ew. That's something I'll wait and order in a restaurant someday because I won't be able to fathom eating something like that I cooked knowing all the fat that's in it. I already knew the leftovers would harden into a disgusting butter like consistency and I'd never eat them.

I pull a lot of my recipes from everywhere as a base starter of what I am going to make and adjust or add in as I need to. I always read the top reviews as well because they have some great advice there as far as what to add and what to leave out.

So basically it's really easy.. which I guess is why it popped up under "quick and easy" on my google.
Start by getting all of your chopping done.
Add butter to pan and cook onions and garlic on low heat until they are caramelized.
Add chopped peppers
In the mean time you can get a bowl together and measure out all of the spices. You'll be saving the lemon juice until the end and I want you to be careful with how much juice you use because it was a little to much for our taste.
Get your rice working - Prepare per package instructions but adding 1-3 bay leaves and chicken stock or bouillon instead of water-
While the veggies are cooking down on low heat you'll need to get a larger sized pot (like a size you would cook spaghetti pasta in or similar) You'll be browning the chicken in this pot and ultimately cooking the entire curry so make sure it has enough surface area to get the chicken sizzling!
Add olive oil to the pot on medium heat, add your bite sized chicken pieces. The idea is to get some light browning on the chicken not necessarily to cook it. The reason for this is so you get more of a home-cooked flavor and meat always tastes better with a little browning.-Don't forget about the rice! (I over cooked mine by now and was remaking a new batch :P )
Add to the chicken pot- your spices, coconut milk, yogurt, sour cream, tomato paste, and bay leaves. Stir and bring to a boil then turn down to a simmer. You'll want this bubbling for about 20-25 minutes. You'll need to continue to stir this every so often because the bottom will burn if you don't. Could you throw all of this in a crock pot in the morning? Sure.. but I'm giving you the 30-40 minute prep- eating time route.

That's all folks! Pretty simple and AMAZING! I am not even kidding! Why would I write a blog post about this if it wasn't fabulous? I will have to say I had my doubts. I did not think that yogurt and coconut milk would give me a creamy enough texture. Especially because I couldn't find any full fat or even partial fat yogurt. I felt like it wouldn't taste right without the sour cream but now that I have made it I realize I could have done without that. I read comments about adding pineapple so that might be interesting? Make it Vegan and take out the chicken, yogurt and sour cream and add chick peas or potatoes for substance.

How pretty!!

As Always feel free to leave comments or questions below! Have you made a curry before? What did you do differently?